The new war in Europe?

The European Union was founded in reaction to what I call
‘old war’ – the wars of the twentieth century. Even though material interests
ought logically to lead to increased political cooperation, contemporary
European politics, or the absence of politics, suggest instead the possibility
of what I call a ‘new war’.

Ulrich Beck, in his wonderful book German Europe to be launched at LSE on Thursday, says that Europe was founded not on the logic of
war but on the logic of risk. The European Union, he points out, is based on a
lot of ‘nots’. It is not a nation, not a state and not an international
organisation. States were built on the logic of war.

The European Union is a different kind of polity constructed
in reaction to the risk of war and now, in reaction, to the risk of economic
collapse. Economists argue that the monetary union was a big mistake in the
absence of political union. But Beck points out that the point was just the
opposite – to create a monetary union that would establish material interest in
political union. Without a monetary union there would be no momentum for
political union.

So far so good.
But there is more to this story. In to-day’s Europe, economic and
political logics are pulling in opposite directions. It is true that monetary
union dictates the need for political union and everyone understands this at
élite levels. But the consequences
of monetary union and the neoliberal agenda with which it was associated is, at
one and the same time, undermining what is known as the permissive consensus
and greatly weakening the legitimacy of European élites and with that the
European project.

The European Union was founded in reaction to what I call
‘old war’ – the wars of the twentieth century. Even though material interests
ought logically to lead to increased political cooperation, contemporary
European politics, or the absence of politics, suggest instead the possibility
of what I call a ‘new war’.

This idea that economic co-operation would lead to political
co-operation was a central tenet of European integration from the
beginning. The founders of the
European Union believed that through what was known as ‘low politics’, ‘high
politics’ would follow. Economic and social co-operation would bring people
together and this would lead eventually to a political union. And during the
first three decades after World War II, this argument did appear to have some
merit. The so-called Monnet method involved cooperation on infrastructure (coal
and steel), agriculture, as well as regional assistance. And small steps were
taken in the direction of greater political co-operation.

But after 1989, all this changed. On the one hand, this was
the high point of the post-1968 cosmopolitan movements – ‘freedom’s children’
as Beck calls them. The coming together of peace and human rights and the end
of the Cold War led to a new wave of Europeanism. On the other hand, it was
also the coming of age of neo-liberalism. The same critique of the rigidity,
paternalism and authoritarianism of the state developed by ‘freedom’s children’
was used by the right to argue for more markets – deregulation, privatisation
and macro-economic stabilisation. ‘Freedom’s children’ had taken social justice
for granted and in reacting against the old left had opened the space for the
new radical right. The 1991 Maastricht Treaty can be regarded as a contract
between the new wave of pro-Europeans, championed by Jacques Delors, and the
new marketers epitomised by Margaret Thatcher.

The logic of the market is very different from the logic of
earlier forms of state co-operation. This contradictory union between
cosmopolitanism and the market was played out over the last two decades. On the
one hand, Europe expanded to the East and developed its neighbourhood policy
largely based on the outward application of the Monnet method, using techniques
that had been developed in the process of integration to bring in the outside
world, extending ‘low politics’ to the neighbourhood and even sometimes beyond.

It developed external policies for crisis management and for
development similarly organised, albeit often rather bureaucratically, becoming
in the process the biggest aid donor in the world and contributing to global
debates about climate change, poverty or global security.

On the other hand, the rules of the single market and the
euro – the so-called convergence criteria – associated with other neoliberal
reforms, led to increased inequality, insecurity and atomisation undermining
community and/or cosmopolitan politics. What is more, internal security and
surveillance, especially on the borders of the expanded Europe contributed to
growing mistrust within societies.

It is true, as Beck points out, that material interests
could force political co-operation. That is the only way to save the euro. But
the ‘high politics’ of the European Union is still absent – we only have Merkiavelli.

National élites lack popular support and the so-called
permissive consensus that allowed continued integration is rapidly
disappearing. The fate of the technocratic Prime Ministers, Mario Monti and
Lukas Papademos, imposed on Italy and Greece, illustrate the end of this
permissive environment.

What Europe faces is a profound political crisis. This was
the main conclusion of our report ‘The
bubbling up of Subterranean Politics’. The protests and demonstrations, the
new political initiatives and the new parties, are not necessarily a reaction
to austerity. They were and are about a profound loss of trust in current
political élites – a belief that these élites are locked into financial and
media interests and unable to act on behalf of the public good, and a sense
that representative democracy is no longer about participation, but about
reproducing that élite.

The problem is that in the absence of a bottom-up
emancipatory cosmopolitanism, a project of European solidarity, that lack of
political trust can easily be manipulated by xenophobic, eurosceptic and
exclusivist parties of various stripes. Parties like UKIP, the True Finns, the
Dutch Freedom party, New Dawn and similar parties are making electoral inroads
in nearly every European country. And the mainstream parties, preoccupied by
short term electoral considerations, tend to pander to the sentiments expressed
by these parties instead of voicing the longer term public interest.

It is very difficult to see how Europe can escape this
downwards spiral. The union of Europeanism and monetary stability is so
ingrained in the German psyche that it is unlikely that a German Europe, led by
what appears from Beck’s description, an apolitical pragmatist, would ever
change course.

The lack of bottom-up pressure at a European level, the
weakness of trans-European solidarity, the fragmentation of subterranean
politics, all hint at dark political tendencies. Far from being an exception, a
marginal oddity, Greece could represent the future for much of Europe.

What is happening in Greece is typical of what I call a new
war. Dramatic cuts in public spending weaken state capacity and further erode
trust and legitimacy, providing a space for a combination of criminality and
extremist politics. Such a combination is self-reproducing, since those
involved profit from disorder. It is thus very difficult to end or to contain
and a new type of predatory political economy that knows no formal borders
comes into being.

The only answer is cosmopolitan political authority but
where is this to come from?

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